On Fri, 2022-02-11 at 21:19 +0200, Joonas Niilola wrote: > On 11.2.2022 1.36, Michał Górny wrote: > > Hi, > > > > As you may have noticed, I'm practically maintaining LLVM all by myself. > > This is a really tedious, time consuming and ungrateful task, and I'm > > pretty close to burnout. I'd really appreciate some help. > > > > The problem with LLVM that it's a really huge, rapidly moving forward > > (and breaking things) project. It needs frequent testing as regressions > > happen frequently, and we have a good chance of having somebody else fix > > it if we report them early. At the same time, testing takes a lot of > > time. While ccache is pretty much a must, it doesn't help much long > > term as the code is changing frequently and invalidating the cache. > > > > On top of this, there's almost-overlapping release process and Gentoo > > slotting that's working so-so at best. After I've pushed LLVM 13.0.1 > > final, I've had to immediately start testing 14.x and barely managed to > > get some fixes in before rc1. Now 14.0.0 is expected soon, > > simultaneously major changes are happening on the main branch > > (i.e. 15.x) that also need testing and adjusting the ebuilds to. > > Would it help at all to not always support different _rc's and .9999s? > Or would that just bite "us" (as in Gentoo) back with a delay?
RCs are our chance to get upstream fixes into the release. If we skip them, it means we'll end up having to backport everything ourselves. It's a loss for us, and it's a loss for other people using LLVM. Plus, filing bugs as "release blockers" has a certain psychological effect. > > > > > 6. Work on setting up and configuring a buildbot for Gentoo LLVM builds. > > This is some effort and I don't have the time to learn how to do that. > > You'll probably need to set up a local instance and figure out how to > > set our builds before submitting anything upstream; in my experience > > they aren't very responsive to buildbot changes, so ideally we need to > > flesh out any problems early. > > GSOC-worthy project? Not sure. To rephrase what was once said to me, this is summer of *code*, not infra work. > > > > > Yes, that's a lot of work. I can't do it all myself, I'm already doing > > too much and this is having negative impact on my health. I really need > > help with this. > > > > I wonder if llvm and toolchain projects should join - not that there's > probably anyone in toolchain interested/capable of doing llvm/clang > currently. But they'd be the next with knowledge for at least simplest > version bumps if you lay back a bit. Remember this is just a hobby - > even though your work is very much appreciated, not worth of wearing > yourself out over. > > I don't think this will help in any way -- just like having more people on the project roster doesn't help. -- Best regards, Michał Górny
